While most of us have been brought up to trust that prayer involves pleading to God to greatly help, save, fix problems and bring us things nowadays, that’s not true prayer nor its purpose. Prayer in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is quite different and very beautiful. Greater than a song, it really is joyous exchange of Love and thanks between God and His Creations that employs the forgiveness process to improve the mind until the Prayer Song is all that remains. It’s the ticket home so understanding true prayer, and forgiveness, will probably be worth enough time in retraining your brain.
Prayer is exchanging (sharing) a Song of Love and Creation or judgments of the ego based on what you ask for (agree with) in your brain. un curso de milagros There is absolutely no other way. In the Course, your brain (content) is split between God and the ego; and you are choosing all the time with a side as cause for effect.Forms (everything of the world) are miscreations reflecting the ego’s judgmental thought system. We’ve managed to get up (miscreated this world) and may give it up anytime by correcting the mind (forgiveness). True prayer requires this correction of your brain as God has nothing in connection with forms.
What Prayer isn’t:
Since you are always deciding, what you ask for once you pray is what matters. When you plead in prayer to have God fix a form problem with another form problem, you are asking the ego mind for help (not God). Those forms and needs are deemed more important than God’s Love which will remain hidden to the amount you select the illusion.
All external things (forms) are needs. Other labels are wants, desires, status, problems, sickness, human love (special relationships), gifts and goals nowadays, etc. They are everything you choose as substitutes for God’s Love and the ego will distort the purpose of prayer by using them to help expand the illusion. Therefore, prayer can’t be about “forms” or “needs” at all.
The objective of Prayer:
The Song of Prayer is defined by the Course as a Song of Creation, Love and gratitude being sung from the daddy to the Son and returned from the Son to the Father. God gave this gift of Want to His Son at Creation so that it is a single voice shared by both Creator and Created. Continuously sharing Love and Creation backwards and forwards extends them forever in eternity. That’s prayer’s purpose.
Within this form world of illusion, this prayer continues to be a gift from God offered through the Holy Spirit, the memory of God in your brain. It’s the way you reach God in the illusion. Anyone who has ever remembered the littlest instant of this all-inclusive joy must begin questioning what he could be choosing (praying for) and how to change his mind so he can have that all the time.
True Prayer and Forgiveness:
True prayer is: (1) asking to receive what is already there, The Song; and, (2) along the way, using forgiveness (correction of the mind) to stop the ego forms or what is not really there. Joining with Love in true prayer is requesting nothing (i.e., no illusion, forms or needs) so you find yourself receiving everything (Love). One problem. One solution.
Forgiveness (correction of the mind) is a part of true prayer and makes the procedure go quicker. Prayer is timeless and goes on forever, and forgiveness may be the illusory ladder in time that returns your brain to this endless exchange. Forgiveness disappears once the mind is totally corrected and remembers only The Song.
The big secret of true prayer and forgiveness would be to concentrate on disregarding and quitting the things you imagine you want and need in the illusion, even the specifics, as this asks for your brain to be returned to Truth (Love). You are not furthering the illusion. You are agreeing with God that (a) you are a mind; (b) this form world isn’t real; (c) you made a mistake; and, (d) it is possible to choose again.
Using correction of your brain (forgiveness) places those forms and needs on God’s altar, or in his hands, as idols which are only anything you have chosen to be more important than God’s Love. No more wanting anything before His Love, the only effect God could return can be your remembrance of Him. The more you give up, the more meaningless the world becomes and the faster you sing His Song.
Prayer in the Illusion:
Since the mind still resides with God, the Course says you don’t have to decide alone and should ask the Holy Spirit for help deciding and wait for the solution. Otherwise, you’ve already decided with the ego. In the event that you must decide on the spot, you’ll receive the appropriate “need” answer right then.A remedy is an echo of God’s Voice from the Song of Prayer. You are not requesting the echo itself. You are choosing the gift of Love from The Song by giving up all form needs. “Need” answers in the illusion are contained within that echo even during the correction of the mind process. They are met at the amount of the forgiveness ladder it is possible to understand and accept.